Justyna Dorsz

Notes

Weekly Notes on the last day of the week

Last day of the week for me is Sunday. But apparently for a lot of people Sunday is the first day of the week. It’s so strange to think of Sunday as the first day. I’ve tried it for a few minutes — I actively wanted to convince myself that Sunday, not Monday, is the…

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How to get a $250 gift code from Threadless

I have a lot of designs and all of them are uploaded to my Artist Shop on Threadless, and sometimes I submit them to Threadless competitions. Every once in a while Threadless selects one of the designs to add to their main store and then they send me a $250 gift code. What do you…

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Flat Earth

Watch this video from a guy who used to believe that Earth was flat: He now knows that Earth is round but — he says so himself — he used to be completely sure that Earth was flat. It’s so weird how normal he seems. I thought that most people that claimed some strange stuff…

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Sabotage

Recently someone asked for opinions about their designs. But they insisted on receiving “positive feedback only”. What do you say to that? My standard response is, of course, to stay silent. If they haven’t asked for honest feedback, then it’s pointless to impose my opinion on them. But I can’t help feeling that they are…

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Sales are worth it

Websites, where I sell my designs, run site-wide sales every few weeks. Everything is discounted, sometimes as much as 50%. I know some artists complain about it. When there’s no sale we earn around 25% of the price of an item. When there is a sale we get less, often as low as 10%. But…

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My designs continue to surprise me

The image below shows my best-selling designs this past month. Not Today continues to be on top: Not Today Space Botanica Among Trees Inconceivably Vast Adequate Expression of Feelings Jump – that’s a surprise! Not Today (Black Variant) — remember to add inverted designs when it makes sense! Let’s Make Trouble — I did not…

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Weekly Notes and the last day of February

All my days are so busy. I don’t know how other people do it, it seems everyone manages their time better than me. Lately, I’ve been constantly overwhelmed by how much work I have, by all those tasks on my to-do lists. It’s already the end of February and I haven’t even started on my…

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Uninterrupted work

What I like best is when I have a few hours of completely uninterrupted work, either programming or drawing. No emails, no phone calls, no Facebook. I just watched an interview with Brandon Sanderson, a fantasy author, and he says the same thing, but about writing. He says he likes to have two 4-hour long…

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Travis moment

Travis was a chimpanzee adopted by two people, Sandra and Jerome. They raised him and treated him as if he were their child. Travis lived at their home, ate at a table with the family, rode in their car, watched tv, helped around the house. What Travis did one day can’t be summarized better than…

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Don’t Panic

I see a lot of artists worried about low sales these past few weeks. Don’t panic! That’s completely normal this time of year. I’ve been a designer since 2012, and it has always been like that. February and March are just very, very slow months. Maybe this year is a bit slower than the previous…

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I hired a law firm (Update #2)

One thing that’s been on my mind recently is this whole situation with illegal sellers. In December, I hired a lawyer and we sent requests to 19 people to stop selling my designs and pay me compensation. Recently, we’ve sent requests to 17 more people. But I’ve already found more. The most stolen one is:…

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Squarespace vs WordPress – The Costs

I manage two websites: This one, justynadorsz.com, which runs on WordPress and is hosted on DigitalOcean. A website about games that my brother and I made: manichyena.com — it’s hosted on Squarespace for now. I will be moving manichyena.com to WordPress in the upcoming days. The main reason is the financial one. Let’s look at…

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Store Maintenance CHECKLIST

I have a few stores with my designs. My main store is on Threadless but I also have my Teepublic store and a few smaller ones. I could leave them as they are and I would earn some passive income from them. But my stores would decline in popularity if I didn’t maintain them properly….

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What do people buy?

I’ve written a lot about why you should open your own apparel store and sell your designs. But opening a store and uploading your art is just the first step. When I started, I rarely got any sales. Once or twice a month someone bought a t-shirt with my design. The more designs I uploaded,…

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I keep drawing cats and putting them on t-shirts

If you are hesitating to start your own store because you “can’t draw”, then you should know that some of my designs are really not that complicated. Make a few sketches of your favorite animal and chances are that one of those sketches will be interesting enough to sell it on a t-shirt.

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February is the worst month and that’s okay

If you are a freelancer, your income is often unstable. When I was starting there have been months when I didn’t earn anything, and when I did earn something, it was less than $5 a month. Now, that I have a lot of designs in my online stores, I get regular royalty payments each month,…

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How funny are you?

Overall, funny t-shirts sell better. It’s not only my experience. Just recently I watched Michael Essek’s videos where he shares advice on designing and selling and marketing and he said pretty much the same thing. He said about 90% of his t-shirts are funny. It’s difficult to think of a funny design on the spot….

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Disruptions

Joshua Waitzkin is a chess master, he wrote the book “The Art of Learning”. I was reminded about it today when my neighbors were listening to music too loudly. Joshua wrote that you are supposed to be able to concentrate even if something is distracting you. As an example: there was someone mowing the grass,…

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Forest Person – another variant

A few days ago I shared my Forest Person design: This is a black design on a grey background. But not everyone likes wearing light t-shirts. So I always try to invert colors and upload the design again, this time as a white design on a black background. However, when I inverted the colors, the…

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My Top 10 Designs

I sorted my designs by how much money they’ve earned me so far. Some fun facts: My top 4 designs have cats! 8 out of 10 are black and white designs. I hesitated to send 5 of those 10 designs to Threadless and to my store. I thought no one would like them. And yet,…

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ReMarkable Cat

All my days are spent sketching on reMarkable or working on our cat book. I am also searching for a new apartment. This cat is another minimal sketch I made using reMarkable 2.

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One more reason to sell your art on Threadless

It’s not a secret that I like Threadless. They are my favorite company, you can earn a lot of money, and there are even more perks. I’ve just noticed that for the entire month of March Threadless runs an additional promotion for artists. For every regular t-shirt sold in your Artist Shop, you get double…

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